


Chasing Ghosts

by mattiemogan



Category: Dark Avengers (Comic), Wolverine (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Loss of Virginity, Post-World War II, Wedding Night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-17
Updated: 2010-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-03 15:51:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17880704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattiemogan/pseuds/mattiemogan
Summary: Logan remembers Itsu and struggles to understand his deeply disturbed son.If I ever leave this world aliveI'll take on all the sadness that I left behind





	Chasing Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> For a second he saw the earth opening up to devour him. Then he felt his footsteps against the earth, compact, more solid than ever.  
>                                                                                                             -Tomás Rivera

This time Logan’s at a bar in Saratoga when the newscaster breaks in, when the image rolls across the screen. The ticker at the bottom says something he doesn’t bother to read. He simply gets up from the table and heads for the bathroom, letting the door swing shut behind him. He heads for the first stall, steps inside, and stands there. Then, on second thought, he decides to slam the door. Feels good to do that—just a little. Reminds him of his old ways. But the door simply bounces back open. He doesn’t bother to latch it shut.

He is, he thinks, exhausted. And warm, unexpectedly warm. He knows people are waiting for him—outside—but he just needs to seethe for a minute. His colleagues must be losing patience with him—he doesn’t blame them, he’d be a lot less patient if he were they.

He doesn’t always react this way when he sees his kid on the news or in the papers. Not always. But lately, more often than not.

“Logan?” Someone pushes the door open. Carol.

“Give me a minute.”

“We need to move. Now.”

“A minute,” he says. He doesn’t mean to raise his voice, but it happens anyway.

The door closes. He reaches to get a paper towel from the dispenser.

He knows he needs to dust off and compose himself. Worse things have happened, after all. He’s not the first guy in the world to have a kid go shit-side up. Small comfort.

Everyone talks. Everyone’s _talking_. It’s understandable. Human. He’d do the same if it were happening to someone else.

Most of his colleagues seem unexpectedly unmoved by the whole situation. He occasionally gets looks—but that’s nothing new. The main feeling he gets from people is one of sympathy, sometimes pity. Sometimes resentment? (The resentment comes mostly from the San Francisco side of things. New York handles the situation with more aplomb. Surprising. Considering.)

Above all, he just gets the sense that people are relieved. They’re just glad it’s not happening to them. To have your kid masquerading as you, unraveling your every public deed? Well . . . it is what it is.

But not everyone’s so outwardly understanding, and he can definitely feel things shifting. This has been going on long enough. And occasionally, he catches a whiff of how people really feel.

For instance: One day he stopped in without giving anyone a heads up. He wasn’t supposed to be back so soon. He was slipping from room to room when he heard Laura’s clipped, emotionless voice coming from the kitchen. He paused and listened.

“I know,” she said. “That’s what others have said.”

She was on the phone.

“I agree. It’s out of control. It is beyond all of us now. I don’t know why Logan didn’t just take him out when he had the chance. Now? I agree with you . . . You’re correct. It’s too late.”

Logan stood in the doorway and looked down at her.

She was sitting at the table, legs crossed. When she saw him she sat up, closed the phone, and looked straight ahead. Didn’t even bother to say goodbye to whomever she was talking to.

“Who was that?”

“Who was what?”

He stepped into the room and leaned forward, resting his palms against the table. Looked down at her, and hard. “You got special insights. Let’s hear them.”

She remained unruffled. “I didn’t know you were there. How did you sneak up on me? It’s as though you just appeared.”

“Who the hell were you talking to?”

“No one.”

“You’ve done some interesting things,” he said. “You’ve found some interesting ways to fuck up. What should I have done with you? Should I have taken you out when I had the chance?” Tell me, he thought, what I should have done.

Laura’s face relaxed. She seemed unmoved—undisturbed, perhaps, with the idea of non-existence. Anything for the team, her expression seemed to say. Anything for the common good.

(This was another failure. This was another sore to probe. When he had the time, he’d worry.)

She rose from the table and didn’t look at him. She was not, he recognized, going to give him the satisfaction he needed, the chance to explain. “You surprised me. That’s all.” She moved past him, and then paused. “Someone should really put a bell around your neck.”

*

He doesn’t have the time to worry because he’s busy. He travels a lot.

Against the backdrop of the open interstate with its uncaring monotony and normalizing little green highway exit signs, he thinks of Daken in the news. Daken’s two-dimensional image stays with him.

The American Midwest in the wintertime is cruel and boring. His mind shifts to Africa—another wide open space, another backdrop for imagining things. He remembers sitting across from Daken that morning, that last morning. The desert at night had been cold, but when the sun came up it got warm, and Daken had slipped out of his shirt.

The fire had gone out.

Daken lay there, his back against a rock, staring into the distance. His legs were splayed out in front of him, his arms crossed in front of his chest and he looked very young and strong, and Logan knew that he had once looked very young and strong, but he couldn’t remember, couldn’t pin down the image, or the timeframe for that. But Logan couldn’t help but look at Daken. He just wanted to stare for a long time at this person. Wanted to marvel at the randomness of genetics. The kid didn’t look anything like him—good for him, Logan supposed. He was, as Logan thought when he first laid eyes on him, beautiful. And the fact that he was marked, tattooed—it was more a dare to his beauty than anything else. A way to flaunt and cast aside what other people wished they’d been born with. A way to build something up by tearing it down.

In Africa, your mind dreamed without your body. Logan could feel the agelessness of things. He knew that each continent was, at its heart, the same as another; none was older than the rest. But Africa felt older, and it wasn’t just his Western perceptions clouding his mind, either. Nor his sentimentality. He knew, at moments like this one, that the only way he would cease to exist was if the earth chose to swallow him.

And he knew, somehow, that Daken must have thought the same thing.

The kid looked off into the distance and frowned, and Logan thought he looked almost sad for a minute, and he wanted to say something. Wanted to talk about the land swallowing both of them. But then Daken caught his gaze, smirked. He’d known Logan was looking. The frown, the big sad eyes—it was all part of the jig.

Daken took a swig from a water bottle and leaned back, gazing up at the sky. He placed one hand on his abdomen, his fingertips grazing his belt buckle. He tucked his thumb in his pants and tugged, just slightly, so that his hip bone was exposed along with the pale and almost vulnerable-looking part of his lower abdomen. A thin line of hair ran from his naval to below his belt. He exhaled and looked up at Logan. His face was blank.

Logan knew what he was doing—of course he knew. He recognized the shift in the air. Didn’t mean he wasn’t vulnerable, though. “Cut it out,” he said.

“What? Cut what out?”

Logan pushed aside his discomfort. He climbed to his feet. “We’re leaving in five.”

Daken looked up at him. Arched an eyebrow. Then, looked down and laughed. Whispered something in Japanese. A taunt. Something cruel, something no one would say. Who the hell said things like that?

Logan paused. Thought about just saying it. Yes, Daken, you look just like her. Yes, you remind me of her. She was beautiful. A good woman. Innocent. Didn’t know violence before I brought it to her. Perfect. You’re right, you’re right.

Is that what Daken wanted to hear? Doubtful. All this was so sentimental and trite. And, moreover, irrelevant. The earth had already swallowed its ghosts; Itsu was not one of them.

*

He crosses the American West, down to Texas, down to New Mexico. Now the land looks even more like Africa, but it’s not. It’s Indian land, _tierra del mestizo_. And it’s warmer.

There’s a cockfighting ring in a small, nameless border town. In his better days, he would have stopped to break it up. The animals are always with him, after all, and they don’t deserve this treatment. This time he just watches one bird take apart another.

When it’s all over, he approaches the one of the owners of the birds, asks him for a word. “How much?” he asks in Spanish.

The boy quotes him some ridiculous figure. Cradles the bird in his arms, touches its feathers.

Logan reaches out to stroke the bird’s wings. It’s a beautiful animal—too beautiful, it seems, to be here. He’s watched it destroy three other roosters, three in a row. He wonders if its time isn’t running out. Everyone meets their match some time or another.

“ATM,” Logan asks. The boy tells him where to find one.

Half an hour later, he stands in front of the machine, poised to take a huge chunk from his bank account. Then he looks up, sees the mirror that holds the camera. Now he’s back to the practical. Where will he keep a bird this size? He imagines the rooster in New York, in San Francisco. He wonders what people will say. It’s just a bird, he tells himself. And the cost is considerable. Could he leave the rooster with a farmer? No, it would just kill the other birds in the coop.

*

This time he’s at a Starbucks in a Phoenix suburb. He buys a cup of coffee and a newspaper. Decides to not look at the cover because he knows what it’s about. (Not him.) He sits at a table and turns to the crossword puzzle. But he doesn’t do anything. He just sits there.

The Starbucks smells the same as ever. Logan wonders why they all smell the same. He could be anywhere. He is anywhere. He’s everywhere and anywhere and nowhere all at once these days. It’s weird.

Everyone has a moment—he knows this now. Before he got his memories back, he didn’t know. But now he knows what other people mean when they talk.

For him—for a small part of him, anyway—it will always be 1946, and the language he uses in 1946 isn’t his own, but it is as useful a tool for self expression as any. And it is useful enough in the field, in the market, in the places where he finds her and asks her name.

She smiles at him, laughs, but another girl pulls her along. But she seems something other than happy. She seems relieved. She seems, he understands, pleased that he has seen her—that someone, anyone, even the short funny-looking white man, has affirmed her existence.

“Sir?”

Logan looks up. A woman is leaning toward him. She is about thirty, thirty-five. “Could I see the newspaper?”

He looks down at the newspaper beneath his fingertips. He hasn’t been reading it—but it’s his. It’s not the store’s copy. “It’s mine,” he says.

She stares at him. Then blinks. “No, I know. I don’t want it. I just wanted to see it. Just for a sec. I’ll give it back to you.”

“Why do you want to see it?”

She stares at Logan. Then, someone calls from the doorway. “Diane, come on. My whole life is going by.”

The woman straightens, looks between the door and Logan. Then, leaves.

Logan’s outside climbing onto his bike.

“Your grammar,” Itsu said.

“What?”

They were under the tree together.

“You asked me your name,” she said.

They were under the tree together, and it was warm outside, and he was drifting in and out of consciousness. They had been together for several months. She was pregnant by then but only a few people knew. It wasn’t their secret, but it was their private knowledge. “Hmm,” he said.

“When we first met, you asked me your name. Not mine.”

He opened his eyes. “Really?”

“You said, ‘What is my name?’”

He remembered. “I was nervous. You’re so beautiful.”

“Your accent was terrible,” she said. And then: “You’ve gotten a lot better since then.”

*

Of all the women he’d been with, Itsu was the straight-forward, and she was the most complex. She was straight-forward because she knew what she wanted—security, a home, a family, a quiet life—and complex because she was just like anyone else bound by time, circumstance, and tradition. She had little. Most of her family was dead, and most of the village men had been carried off by the war. He loved her when he first saw her; later he wondered if she’d ever felt the same way about him. She was poor. She had no parents to arrange a marriage with one of the village men, no dowry, few possibilities. Logan was just an outsider in this small village that was just managing to carry on in the wake of the war. And even though the villagers were tolerant by and large—even though they’d welcomed him, despite every reason why they shouldn’t—there was still that sense of mistrust, that difference.

Itsu had few options. She must have known, almost instinctively, that she needed to carry on for the sake of her village and her clan. Even if that meant letting the white stranger take her as his wife. It was her duty. Arrangements were made quickly. Suboro approved of the union. The other villagers seemed to nod in acceptance, or to turn away in silence. These were desperate times, and no one could afford to be particular. Itsu would not remain alone now. She would be one less unmarried woman putting a strain on the villagers’ resources, or one less girl forced to abandon the village for one of the cities. She would have children with the white man. But at least her line wouldn’t die out.

And as for Logan? Well, taking a wife was also expected of him—as part of his redemption. But he fell in love with Itsu. He didn’t think of it as a duty.

*

He’s not going back to California.

He checks for messages. None. No one would mind if stayed a little longer in Arizona.

The problem is, he’s run out of things to think about, and that’s dangerous. He needs to go back home, wherever that happens to be at any particular moment, so he can fill his mind with other things. Thinking about other things is best. He is, at his simplest, a contemplative man. No one seems to know that. People think he’s a man of action. Which he is. But action and contemplation aren’t mutually exclusive. You can think while you do all kinds of things. That’s the problem.

(Who the hell said things like that?)

And just like that, he’s back with Itsu. Did you, he wonder, love me as much? Ever? He doesn’t know, and that’s why he is thinking. He is trying to marshal evidence.

Their wedding night was terrible.

In bed that night, he’d tried his best to be gentle and considerate, but he’d clearly overestimated her ability to follow his lead, and he’d read her hesitation as self-consciousness, not fear. The darkness and her own careful stoicism hid her shock, her discomfort. At the crucial moment she pulled out from under him. He came on her stomach and on the blanket. She curled up on the other side of the bed and cried silently. He could smell the salt of her tears.

He’d assumed too much—assumed that she had some kind of background, some kind of understanding about sex. He’d figured that much. After all, village life was small. There were animals, people living in close quarters, no separation between bedrooms. He figured that Itsu had seen things. But evidently evidently seeing things and doing things were two different matters. He should have known for this, should have planned for it. After all, she’d been raised mostly by women, by widows and unmarried aunts and sisters, and she’d come of age during a time of war and scarcity, of survival.

He found out too late that she didn’t really know what to expect.

 “Itsu,” he said. He reached for her.

She shrank away from him.

His second mistake was deciding to leave it until the morning. (He had not understood that this sexual failure, in the context of Itsu’s life, was a big deal—maybe the biggest deal, maybe her greatest failure.) When he awoke the sun was in his face and his house was empty. Her bag—the bag that held the few things she owned, the few items she’d brought with her—was gone.

He dressed quickly. He had to find her.

On the road he stopped an old woman. “I’m looking for Itsu. My wife. Have you seen her?”

The woman looked at him, her features moving from disdain to slight amusement. Ah, so the white man couldn’t keep his wife. “She isn’t home?”

He shook his head. This whole good-husband thing was new to him, and that was probably obvious. “She went out.”

“I haven’t seen her,” the woman said, but not before telling him to check with her family.

He didn’t want to go to the family. He knew he should find Suboro and ask him for advice, but he was too embarrassed. He would have to tell him eventually that Itsu had left him and that it was his fault—he just didn’t want to do it right then. The shame would be palpable. But first, Itsu. He had to know that she was okay.

When he returned to his house, he found Itsu standing on the porch alongside her sister. He approached them. Itsu stood on the top step and clutched at her neckline. Her hair was undone, hanging around her shoulders. The sister said something quietly, something he didn’t catch, and came down from the porch.

She stood in front of him. “She came to me,” she said. “We talked. I explained things. Don’t worry. She won’t leave again.” She stepped past him and walked toward the road.

He looked up at Itsu. “Thank God you’re alright.” He climbed the steps.

She didn’t look at him. She nodded. She was no longer crying—and he could tell that she had cried all day—but she looked very tired.

“Come—come inside,” he said, opening the door and holding it for her.

She brushed past him and went into the house. He followed her.

“I was so worried,” he said. “Itsu. Let me—let me get you something to eat.”

She lingered in the middle of the floor, and he moved to the kitchen. He filled a glass with water and turned to take it to her.

In the middle of the room, Itsu was getting undressed. She was slipping out of her clothes as quickly as she could, leaving them in a pile on the floor, her eyes cast downward, her hair in her face. She was so tiny, such a petite woman. He glimpsed her small breasts and narrow hips. The patch of hair between her legs.

He set the water down and crossed the room. “Itsu, Itsu—”

“I’m sorry for leaving,” she said quietly. “I am a terrible wife.”

“No, no,” he said. He reached for clothes and wrapped them around her shoulders.

She cringed. “My sister told me that I have to . . . do this. I have to. It’s what a wife is supposed to do.”

“No.”

“She says that it’s a thing men like to do. But I want to have a baby, so I have to just put up with it—”

“No,” he said, this time much more firmly. He clutched her shoulders. “Your sister is wrong.”

Itsu opened her eyes. She stepped away from him, looked down, and reached for her belt. She picked it up and tightened it around her waist.

He stepped forward and filled the space between them. This time, she didn’t cringe. “It’s not just a thing for men,” he said, pressing his hand against her abdomen. “You’re supposed to like it too. It’s a thing people do when they love each other.” He couldn’t believe he was saying this! He wasn’t expressing himself very well—he couldn’t find the right words. Every sentence sounded more devastating than the last. “It’s supposed to make you feel . . . good.”

She looked up at him, unbelieving. “It hurt. It was so . . . strange . . .”

“That was my fault. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He stepped back from her. “If you don’t like it, you don’t have to do it. I would never make you.”

“You’re my husband,” she said, pushing past him. “It doesn’t matter.”

He reached out and grabbed her arm. “It matters.”

She stopped and looked at him. Her eyes filled with tears. “Why?”

“Because I love you,” he said. “And I want you to feel good.”

“Who says things like that?” She pulled away and headed for the bedroom.

He followed her. She didn’t lie down. She went to the window. He came up behind her and reached up, slowly, to put a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t push him away. “I want to have a baby,” she said.

“I know.”

“You couldn’t know.”

“I mean I understand.”

She turned to look at him. “You don’t understand. How could you? You came here because you wanted to. You can leave any time. I can never leave.” She lowered her eyes. “Where would I go?”

He said, “You have to trust me.” Because he couldn’t think of any other thing to say.

*

That night he pulled her clothes away from her again—this time, more carefully. He knew this was his only chance to get it right. And if she didn’t like it—if he couldn’t show her what there was to like—then it would be the last time. And who knew what would happen then? He wouldn’t force her. He couldn’t do that.

He kissed her for a long time, slowly and deeply, trying to gauge what she was feeling, whether or not she liked it. He pushed the hair back from her forehead and kissed her there. Then he tasted her neck. He touched her left breast, ran his thumb over her nipple. She seemed to respond, just slightly. He kissed her some more and she was kissing him back. He touched her abdomen and she flinched. She was ticklish. He kept it in mind.

She pulled back and looked down at him. He’d kept his pants on.

“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “Not now.”

“But what about . . . ?”

“There’s time. Relax.”

He eased his hand further. She tensed. “It’s okay,” he said. “Do you want me to stop?”

She looked thoughtful. Then shook her head.

He placed his hand between her legs, found the dampness. He kissed her and she relaxed into the bed, but her hips twitched involuntarily. What he wanted to do was taste her, but he knew it would only alarm her. She opened her legs a little more. Gradually, he slipped one finger inside of her and pressed the heel of his hand against her and kissed her again. Again and again.

It was hard to tell what she was feeling. She was aroused, and she was responding—but he couldn’t tell if the response was something she wanted. Then she reached between them. He thought that she’d push his hand away. Instead, she pressed his hand against her. Closed her eyes and sighed. Her legs were twitching now, her hips pushing against him and then back into the blanket again. She spread her legs farther apart and bent one knee. She was in that languid in-between state of wanting to come and having to come, and he needed a few more moments to get her there. He hoped she would just go with it, that she wouldn’t resist.

When she came, she grabbed his wrist and squeezed and pushed his hand away. She drew a quick gasp but didn’t make any other noise, and she pulled away from him. “What—”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said, reaching for her and pulling her back to him. He pressed her against him and held her there, feeling her rapid heartbeat subside. This moment of closeness was more for him than her. Now he knew what it was to be relieved.

*

In the middle of the night she woke him. She surprised him by asking him to make love to her—not in so many words, of course. “Are you sure?” he said.

“I have thought a lot about it in the past few hours.”

He tried not to smile. So he made love to her very slowly. When he entered her, he thrust very gently, holding back. But she was tight, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to hold out for a long time. When he came inside of her, she looked surprised but not shocked. He grabbed her hand and squeezed. They were both sweating, their palms damp.

“And that’s it,” she said.

He tried not to laugh—that was the last thing any new husband wanted to hear—but she was so serious! “That’s it.”

“Oh, you know so much about it,” she said. But now she wasn’t so serious. She was trying to make him laugh.

The next morning he watched her as she ate breakfast. She seemed very thoughtful. “You talk all about these things,” she said. “Of loving me.”

“Of course.”

“It’s so strange.”

“Why is it strange?”

“What about when I am not beautiful anymore?”

“I’m not beautiful myself,” he said. “Don’t worry, you’ll always be beautiful. And you’re kind and generous.”

“But what about when I’m no longer kind and generous?”

He smiled.

She relaxed. They both relaxed around each other. So this is what it would be like, he thought. He hadn’t before known anything about married life, about its secrets and its ordinariness. He liked it. He liked coming home to her, finding her there. He pushed away what he had once been. This was who he was, he told himself, who he’d always been.

They spent their spare time together, the time when he wasn’t training. Outside, under the trees, she told him everything, her whole life story. Her parents’ deaths, how she’d hid from the war. When she talked, he listened. When he talked, she gently corrected his grammar, gave him better words. When he came home each afternoon, she smiled at him, and the smile was motivated by the thought of the things they shared, of what they’d do later.

One afternoon he found her across the table from her sister. They were whispering. When he walked into the room, they stopped. The sister turned to look at him, her expression blank. Itsu looked up at him and smiled warmly, the smile she kept for him when he came home. The smile of their secrets. The sister turned around again, her shoulders hunched. She said she had to leave.

The village was small. Word spread that Itsu had found someone who made her happy, that this husband—this white husband—was giving her the peace and security that her early life had lacked. People stole glances at him when he walked past their houses on his way to work, to train. Women caught themselves staring. Men looked and then pretended not to see him. Suboro smiled when he came, but he alluded to nothing specific.

“What do you think?” she asked him one night after they’d finished making love.

“About what?”

“Do you think we’ll have a baby?”

He tightened his arms around her. “I think we’ll have . . . many,” he tried to say, but the tense was off.

She smiled and corrected him.

What he didn’t quite know, what he failed to realize, was that in some parts of the world, the word for _need_ is the same as the word for lack.

*

In Los Angeles, he cuts out of a bar when the band starts playing the worst rendition of “If I Ever Leave This World Alive” he’s ever heard. He’s only had two beers. But that’s fine, because he’s finally gotten a call. He’s going back to San Francisco. Then, back to New York. Some things need to be done.

That’s good. Because cannibalizing these memories is getting old. As in:

The morning Itsu didn’t get up with him. She said she tired, not feeling well. He brought food to her. “I won’t go today,” he said. “You’re not well.”

She said she would be fine, and that he couldn’t afford to miss a day.

But the next day she was worse, vomiting into a basin. He went to her, but she pulled away. “I need my sister. Can you go and get my sister?”

He sighed. He didn’t much care for the sister, but less than half an hour later he stood outside of the sister’s doorway. He told her what the problem was.

She didn’t blink. “My sister is pregnant, isn’t she?”

“She asked me to find you. She wants you.”

“I’ll come.” She paused. “She’s probably terrified.”

Logan bristled. “There’s no reason for her to be terrified.” He wasn't sure this was true, but he knew that fear was its own poison. He hoped the sister wouldn’t scare Itsu with more of her bullshit.

“Oh, no,” the sister said. “Not scared for herself but for you.” She looked up at him, and the expression on her face was relaxed and smug. She might have deferred to her husband, to the other men of the village—but she made it clear that she had no obligation to submit to him, this interloper, this outsider. “It’s probably why she hasn’t told you yet. Once she tells you, you have to tell everyone else. And when you tell the men? Then you’ll have to undergo the test. To find out if you’re worthy.” She paused again. “It’s not an easy test. For you? It won’t be easy at all.”

“I’ll be fine,” he said quickly. His mind wasn’t on the test. He wanted to get back to Itsu.

The sister stepped out onto the porch and held his gaze for a second longer than she needed to. “You’re a very confident man.” She didn’t falter. “I hope you remain that way.”

*

All of this was really a long time ago and, moreover, really quite unimportant now. The bottom line is that she’s dead, she’s dead, she was just a girl, and that was the best he’s ever been for anybody or anything, and it couldn’t have ended any other way. So that’s that.

He glides under an overpass.  _She says I'm okay, I'm alright, though you have gone from my life—_

One evening he came home, kissed her, told her needed to wash up. He went to the corner and shed his clothes, examined his skin for dirt and mud.

She brought a pitcher of water and poured it into the basin. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

“No.”

She nodded and knelt at the basin. “Other women dress their husbands’ wounds. Their husbands come home with bruises, or worse. I guess they’re not as careful. I guess they don’t have as much control.”

“I’m just lucky,” he said. He reached for a cloth and soaked it in water. He began to bathe, cleaning his shoulders, his arms, his fingernails.

Itsu gave him a look, small and knowing. She knelt and watched. “During the war, our men went away. Most did not come back. Most didn’t dare to come home. But some did. Some came back with missing hands, missing arms, missing eyes.”

He paused. Wrung the water out of the cloth. “I know.”

“No, you don’t. Do you see these men anywhere? Where are they? They don’t exist. They disappeared. My brother among them. Honor requires . . . things.”

He stopped and looked down at her. “The war is over now. It won’t happen again.”

She stood. Undid her robe. Undid her hair.

He straightened. In the dim candlelight he could see her body, see the shape things were taking, the baby in its beginning. He touched her wrist. Then, her abdomen.

She flinched. “That tickles,” she said.

“Still?”

“Always.”

The thing that Daken had said demanded a response, a calling out. But Logan had nothing.

The city looms.

When Daken had told the joke, when he’d said what he’d said, Logan should have replied. He should have told him this: That there no line between the present and the past, no real narrative; it’s all one instantaneous moment, and it’s all happening right now. But no, even that isn’t right, even that falls apart.


End file.
